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Story: Bump in the NightRating: T
Word count: 2420
From
ghoulies and ghosties
And
long-leggedy beasties
And
things that go bump in the night,
Good
Lord, deliver us!
-Traditional
Scottish Prayer
-------
Two
weeks passed and it happened again.
Castle
was alone for the evening, his mother on a date with her newest beau, his
daughter studying in her dorm for a chemistry exam, his muse out for a girls'
night with her best friend.
He
sat up, bleary-eyed from too many hours spent typing furiously away at the no
longer blank document on his laptop. But he was done with Nikki for now. He had
set the scene, conveniently written her into an impossible situation, and all
that remained was for Rook to ride in and save the day.
Well,
for Rook to ride in and *attempt* to save the day, resulting in the dynamic duo
being in more danger than ever and forcing the indomitable Detective Heat to
save both their asses.
The
writer pushed away from his desk, leaning back and rolling his head from side
to side, lifting one hand to press hard against the tight muscle that ached so
much. He missed her and the way she always managed to find just that spot with
her strong, agile fingers.
His
phone lit up with a text just then. “Be there in a few. Hope you're still awake.”
He
grinned, knew he probably looked a little dopey as his thumbs flew over the
screen in response. “Can't wait.” He refrained from
ending the message with a smiley face, knowing she'd tease him mercilessly if
he did.
When
he looked up from his phone, he saw it. A bump under the rug. A large bump.
No
one had believed him the first time. Kate had rolled her eyes and shrugged him
off. Alexis had patted him on the shoulder and said he must have been imagining
it after staring at his computer screen for so long. And Martha had glanced at
the other two and mimed tipping a bottle.
Castle
had finally figured his daughter was right. He'd imagined the whole thing.
He
must have.
But
again?
He
stood slowly, quietly, and tiptoed across the floor toward the spot. Carefully,
he stuck his foot out and nudged the bump. It seemed solid enough beneath the
shaggy, cream-colored rug.
Keeping
his eyes on the spot, he moved quickly toward the corner where he kept the
fencing foils, blindly reaching back to remove one from the set.
He
was just about to use the foil to lift the edge of the rug when he heard a
knock on the front door. Pivoting on the spot, he looked through the open
shelves toward the sound, glanced back down at the floor at the mysterious
bump, and then back toward the door. He wished he’d just
given Kate a key already.
But
alas, he knew she’d likely balk at it,
dubbing it too soon. So he hadn’t.
“Be right there,” he called out.
He
looked over his shoulder once more as he walked out of his office. The bump was
still there.
Opening
the door, he greeted the detective with a wide smile, his lips parting of their
own accord as she pushed up to press a lingering kiss to his mouth, her fingers
curling around his bicep.
“Hi,” she murmured, her eyes
opening bright and happy as he heard the click of her heels dropping back to
the floor.
“Hi,” he whispered back,
still a little dumbstruck by the ease of being with her like this. He hoped it
never became mundane.
“How was your—” she began and then
switched gears rapidly, her voice rising an octave. “Castle?”
His
eyebrows furrowed. “What?”
“Why are you holding a
sword?”
Glancing
down at his hand, he waved it around casually, and Beckett stepped back
slightly, out of the path of the flashing silver. He frowned apologetically,
and she rolled her eyes.
“It’s a fencing foil,
actually,” he pointed out.
She
let out a little huff of breath as if to say, I know that, you idiot, but still looked at him expectantly.
“Oh, I...” he trailed off. “Well, come with me.”
Obediently,
she followed as he turned and strode away, the staccato of her footsteps
ringing through the loft as they made their way back into his office.
But
it was gone.
“What?” she asked when he had
been standing in the middle of the room for a long moment, silently regarding
the spot where he could have sworn he’d
seen it.
“There was a bump,” he said. “Under the rug.”
A
single arched eyebrow greeted him when he turned to look at her, her expression
amused, and a bit incredulous.
“You know what?” he muttered. “Nevermind.”
He
slid the foil back into the repurposed umbrella stand that held the rest of the
collection and swiveled back to find his detective with her shirt already half
unbuttoned, her eyes dark and inviting on his.
The
creepy mystery could wait.
-------
The
next two weeks were unexpected, to say the least.
It
had started the following night. At midnight. Of course.
He
had just checked to make sure the front door was locked when he heard an
unearthly voice.
“Riiiiichaaaaard.”
It
wasn’t loud, more like a
whisper really, but he startled all the same, turning his body as he jumped, a
shiver shooting up his spine. But he was alone in the loft. Completely alone.
He
waited for a moment, but there was no other sound.
Shrugging
it off as his overactive imagination again, he went to bed.
The
next morning, he overslept.
Beckett
and the boys teased him when he finally showed up just before noon, coffees in
hand and what he hoped was an apologetic expression on his face.
“Alarm didn’t go off,” he explained, handing
over one cup to his favorite detective. “It
was set, but it didn’t go
off.”
Esposito
just shook his head, Ryan looked a little sympathetic, and Beckett smirked as
the boys wandered off. “Yeah,
right. You’ll take any excuse to
get more beauty sleep.”
His
lips curled upward and he leaned in, relishing the fact that her breathing
changed and her cheeks turned pink as he invaded her space. “Why, Detective, don’t you think I’m pretty already?”
-------
Four
days later, just as he was drifting into a peaceful sleep, Kate curled in his
arms, he heard a door slam. Upstairs. He hadn’t
heard the front door open, and his mother was out of the apartment again.
“Be right back,” he whispered as he
pressed his lips to the detective’s
forehead and slipped out from beneath her body.
He
grabbed a flashlight and padded quietly across the room and into the entry way.
It was still dark, just as he’d
left it. As he passed the kitchen, he snagged the heavy frying pan that still
sat empty on the stove after their dinner, figuring it would make as good a
weapon as any. And then he climbed the stairs, as silently as possible.
He
had just finished checking all the rooms when he heard footsteps behind him and
swung around, barely missing Kate with the pan.
“Castle?” she yelped, pressing a
hand over her heart.
He
lowered the pan and walked toward her, smoothing his palm down the arm bared by
the thin tee she wore as a nightshirt.
“I heard a door slam,” he explained. “But there’s no one here.”
“Must have been the
wind,” she postulated, stepping
into his warmth and pressing her cheek to his chest.
“Maybe so,” he answered. But he’d just checked, and all
of the windows were shut.
-------
Over
the course of the next several days, objects mysteriously moved while he wasn’t looking, doors creaked
ominously, and he could have sworn he heard Alexis laughing in her room though
she was nowhere to be found.
He
was beginning to get freaked out.
And
then on Tuesday, he left the apartment as his usual time, and walked briskly
toward the elevator. He waited only a moment before the car arrived and he
stepped in, hitting the button for the lobby.
Just
as the doors closed, he caught a glimpse of a hulking black dog with red eyes.
He
saw the same dog right before he walked into his favorite café, nearly bumping into
an old man holding a box of pastries and a tray of coffees.
“Watch where you’re going, why dontcha?” the man growled, and
Castle hastily apologized.
The
dog appeared again near some bushes while he and Kate were walking in the park
at lunch time. The detective saw nothing.
That
evening, as he was sitting on the bed rubbing the day’s tension from her
shoulders, something caught his eye and he looked up from his task and out the
window. The dog with its glowing red eyes was watching him from the window of
an apartment in the building across from his.
His
hands stilled, and Kate lifted her head just enough to give him a sleepy smile.
“Mmm. Don’t stop.”
“Beckett,” he said slowly. “Look out the window.”
Her
head snapped up then, and she looked. “What
am I looking at?”
“That...that dog,” he said.
“What dog?”
He
raised his hand to point. “That
dog right there. The giant black dog with the red eyes.”
She
looked again, but then glanced back at him, her eyebrows knitted. “Castle, there’s no dog.”
He
turned his eyes from her face to stare out the window again. No dog.
Leaning
back against his chest, she sighed and settled into his grasp.
“I think you’re working too hard,” she said quietly.
He
brought one hand up to his face and pressed his fingers against his forehead. “Maybe you’re right.”
-------
It
was well past midnight and he’d
only been awake for a few minutes, but he could tell that Kate was nearly awake
too, her breathing light.
Hmm.
If
he’d been working too
hard, then maybe he should try playing a little harder. Besides, she was off
work the next day.
He
leveraged himself up on one elbow, skimming his fingers lightly over her
shoulder toward the ridge of her collarbone and the soft skin that stretched
tight over it. She sighed, but she wasn’t
quite awake yet.
Carefully,
he lifted the blanket away from her body and watched in wonder as she
instinctively moved closer to him.
He
dropped his head to replace his fingers with his mouth, tasting the remnants of
sweat and crime-solving on her skin, his palm smoothing down her side until he
encountered bare thigh.
Inching
upward, he fingered the edge of her nightshirt, pulling it up over her hip and
revealing pale flesh broken only by a scrap of dark cotton that slid easily
down her legs when he tugged on it.
“Mmm, Castle,” she groaned, and he
looked up at her, found her watching him with eyes luminous in the dim room.
“Hey,” he husked, pressing
one more kiss to the center of her chest, and she smiled, warm and sexy and
adorably sleep-rumpled.
He
pushed himself up until he could kneel between her legs, his fingers delving
beneath the shirt she wore to remove it swiftly.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, and even
in the near darkness he could see the way she blushed at his words.
“Not so bad yourself,” she teased, hooking a
finger into the waistband of his boxers and pulling him back down until their
chests pressed together, delicious friction and warmth sending both of their
hearts pounding.
He
kissed her then, slow and deep, taking his time with her until she was panting
beneath him, her fingers clenching at his back muscles and her legs squeezing
around his thighs, urging him closer.
And
then he heard it.
A
door slammed.
He
lifted his head, his mouth popping wetly away from her neck.
“Riiiiichaaaaard.”
He
pushed himself off her as quickly as he could, his legs still tangled with
hers.
“Castle, don’t stop,” she huffed, her
fingers rising to curl around his ears and tug him back to her.
“I-” he began and then
shook his head.
When
he didn’t answer, she lifted
her hips against his, lowered a hand to let her nails rasp against his chest.
“I heard a door slam,
and then a voice calling my name,” he
blurted out, even as she scraped her teeth against his Adam’s apple. “I think my loft is haunted.”
“No, it’s not,” she assured him,
hooking a lithe calf behind his knee and forcing their lower bodies together.
“Really, Kate,” he tried to tell her,
but she was touching him in all the right places and he was starting to shiver
for reasons other than fear.
“It’s not,” she said, and she
pressed against his shoulder, flipped him neatly onto his back so she could
hover over him.
“But...” he tried again, his
voice trailing off when she plastered the length of her body to his and he felt
her hot breath washing over his ear.
“It’s on a timer. I just
didn’t count on being in the
middle of...something when it started tonight.”
He
got both hands at her ribs, lifted her torso away from him so he could see her
face, her hooded eyes. “Wait.
It...it was you?”
She
laughed, a throaty, dripping-with-sex, absolutely sensuous sound that made his
spine tingle. “The doors, the voices,
the dog. You’re not the only one who
knows people, Castle.”
He
gaped up at her, his mouth open in shock.
She
grinned, pure happiness and a devious kind of pride flashing through the lust
in her eyes.
“Kate Beckett,” he declared. “I have never been more
in love with you.”
“Yeah?” she said with a smirk.
“Prove it.”
-------
He
sighed and felt her smile against his chest. A little help from Martha and
Alexis, some expertise shared by their friend, the magician Tobias Strange, and
a favor owed to her by a couple officers from the K-9 unit—she had explained
everything.
Almost
everything.
“How *did* you manage
that bump under the rug in my office?”
She
sat up. "Uh, Castle?"
"Hmm?"
he murmured lazily, contentedly, his hand trailing softly up and down her bare
side.
She
captured his fingers in a tight grip, and he opened his eyes to take in the
spooked expression on her face.
"I
thought you were joking about that,” she
said quietly.
He
shook his head. “No.”
And
then she went pale. “Castle,
that wasn't me."
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